Popular CRM Options for Contractors

It is time for anoth­er update of pop­u­lar cloud-based cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment (CRM) pro­grams that have con­tin­ued to be pop­u­lar for the con­tract­ing mar­ket. There are lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of options out there. I will list them in no par­tic­u­lar order except the first 5 or 6 I’ve had more expe­ri­ence in test­ing or using. If you are a con­trac­tor (home improve­ment busi­ness) and would like to add your favorite CRM to the list, please do so in the com­ment section. Before I list the CRMs, you might be won­der­ing what val­ue a CRM can bring to your orga­ni­za­tion. Here are a few blogs I have writ­ten on CRMs and some of their ben­e­fits: How Can You Run a Busi­ness with­out a CRM A key exam­ple of how a CRM can help increase your sales

Pop­u­lar CRMs for Home Improve­ment Contractors

Base CRM: I have been fol­low­ing the folks at Base CRM for many years. Their prod­uct just keeps get­ting bet­ter and stronger. It is a fair­ly sim­ple CRM to use and yet is also very pow­er­ful. A busi­ness of any size could ben­e­fit from Base. If you are just start­ing out, Base real­ly is a help­ful CRM that can be used on just about any desk­top, tablet or mobile device. If you are a large cor­po­rate look­ing for an alter­na­tive to Sales­force,Base CRM is a sol­id option for your sales team. It is what I use for my con­sult­ing busi­ness. Pipeline Deals: Even though I might use Base as my cur­rent CRM, I am a huge fan of Pipeline Deals. Almost all my paint­ing clients and remod­el­ers use Pipeline Deals. It is one of the least com­pli­cat­ed and yet pow­er­ful CRMs on the mar­ket. It is easy to get up and run­ning for your sales team. Sev­er­al things I love about Pipeline is the col­lab­o­ra­tion and account­abil­i­ty that can be done with­in the CRM, easy report­ing to know where your team is at, and an excep­tion­al sup­port staff. If you have a ques­tion, the Pipeline Deals sup­port team is per­haps the best I’ve ever seen. They are very respon­sive by email, chat or phone! I have recent­ly built a cus­tomer mar­ket­ing report­ing sys­tem, which only works with Pipeline Deals. I can now inte­grate my clien­t’s Pipeline account into my report­ing soft­ware to mon­i­tor and track mar­ket­ing expens­es, leads and sales. Sales­force: Is per­haps the most wide­ly known CRM on the mar­ket today. 15 years ago it was ACT! that lead the way of CRMs. Sales­force is the new CRM leader for small, medi­um and many large orga­ni­za­tions. Sales­force has done a good job the last sev­er­al years of cater­ing more to the small­er com­pa­nies by low­er­ing their ini­tial cost per user. It now starts at $25 a month per user for some basic yet valu­able CRM tools. Many of the com­pa­nies I have con­nect­ed with in the con­tract­ing world find that Sales­force is a bit too pow­er­ful for their needs. I think if your orga­ni­za­tion is orga­nized enough and has a great oper­a­tions team that can imple­ment well, Sales­force is still a lead­ing CRM that can do just more than many of us think! There are tons of plu­g­ins and add-ons for Sales­force too that can help with finances, mar­ket­ing, oper­a­tions, sched­ul­ing and more. Zoho: I won’t go into details about Zoho here. It appears that Zoho tried to cre­ate a prod­uct that mim­ic­ked Google Apps for Work and Sales­force for a cheap­er price tag. Zoho has a lot of prod­ucts that con­nect with each oth­er: project man­age­ment, CRM, billing soft­ware, sched­ul­ing, and so forth. Mar­ket­Sharp: I used Mar­ket­Sharp 12 – 15 years ago when I worked in my father’s paint­ing com­pa­ny. Back then it did func­tion as a CRM, but we were using ACT! 2000 at the time. There­fore, Mar­ket­Sharp served our com­pa­ny by help­ing us do job site mail­ers. It was real­ly a great tool for this. We did not take advan­tage of all the fea­tures Mar­ket­Sharp had to offer. Fast for­ward to 2016, Mar­ket­Sharp is still in the busi­ness. That says a lot! I have lost touch with them a bit, but from what I can tell, they have real­ly con­tin­ued to devel­op their prod­uct for the home improve­ment indus­try. Their CRM looks real­ly quite good if you want an all in one solu­tion! Any CRM real­ly has val­ue if your com­pa­ny com­mits to learn­ing and using it. I’d rec­om­mend find­ing one you real­ly like and will see your team using it. The ones list­ed below I’ve done some basic user test on, but I do not have exten­sive expe­ri­ence with them. Still, they have their place and can be con­sid­ered! Insight­ly CRM: One of the ear­ly cloud-based CRMs on the mar­ket that start­ed out FREE of charge for a num­ber of years. I believe this is how it gained some cred­i­bil­i­ty. It has great fea­tures and worked well. It is no longer free but remains a qual­i­ty CRM. Pipedrive Cap­sule: A low cost and sim­ple CRM to use for a small con­tract­ing busi­ness. Solve CRM: This has been around for quite a few years and was an ear­ly adapter and part­ner to Google Apps. It is a com­plex yet ​“sim­ple” CRM. How­ev­er, I found it a lit­tle too com­pli­cat­ed for me to use and imple­ment. Nut­shell CRM: These folks do a great job with usabil­i­ty and design. They were also one of the first to cre­ate mobile apps for their prod­uct. Very slick prod­uct and great cus­tomer sup­port. Hub­spot: These folks are the leader in mar­ket­ing automa­tion soft­ware and inbound mar­ket­ing. They cre­at­ed a CRM sev­er­al years ago that has been grow­ing in mar­ket share. Batch­book CRM: A very cost effec­tive and easy to use sim­ple CRM. Their sup­port team is also very respon­sive. They do not offer a lot of updates like Base, Pipeline & Salesforce…but when they do, they are good updates! Kar­ma CRM: I used this CRM for awhile and real­ly liked it. The mobile side of things (at the time) suf­fered a bit. Yet the user inter­face on the desk­top was great. I real­ly enjoyed Kar­ma and get­ting to know the staff being Kar­ma CRM. Great peo­ple! Cork CRM: I have test­ed Cork a bit and believe it is good for a small paint­ing com­pa­ny. When I reviewed Cork, it was cre­at­ed for paint­ing con­trac­tors pri­mar­i­ly. It does a bit more than cus­tomer man­age­ment. It can cre­ate estimates/​proposals and sched­ule projects as well. I did not find it a great option for a medi­um or large paint­ing company.